In the years 1978-1990, the Polish Chemical Society's Division for the History of Chemistry made attempts to collect materials on the organization and practice of the clandestine teaching of chemistry at university level during the Nazi occupation of Poland in the years 1939-1945, when all tertiary education for Poles was banned. In order to collect the materials, two questionnaires were devised, one for the instructors and the other for the students in the process, which were published in the journal 'Wiadomosci Chemiczne' (Chemical News) in the form of an appeal, and also sent out by post to some of those involved. There were no responses to the appeal, but the questionnaires formed a basis for interviews conducted with the instructors, Prof. Osman Achmatowicz and Prof. Witold Tomassi, as well as a student of the clandestine classes, Ms. Halina Wolska. The paper contains the two questionnaires, the interviews, and the reply by dr. Danuta Kozłowska to the questionnaire she received by mail.
The paper presents an overview of research topics in the field of physical chemistry conducted in Poland in the years 1945-1960 based on a search in a number of Polish chemical journals: 'Roczniki Chemii' (Annals of Chemistry), 'Przemysl Chemiczny' (The Chemical Industry), 'Sprawozdania Polskiej Akademii Umiejetnosci' (Reports of the Polish Academy of Learning), 'Bullletin de l'Academie Polonaise des Sciences', 'Wiadomosci Chemiczne' (Chemical News) and on bibliographical information sent in by particular scientists. The paper starts with a discussion of the relaunching of the activities of chairs and divisions of Physical Chemistry that existed before 1939 and the establishment of new research units of this type at universities, technical universities and research institutes after World War Two. It then goes on to list the topics of research according to particular branches of physical chemistry. A total of over 1100 publications have been taken into account. The first studies in physical chemistry after the war continued the topics of pre-war research, with new research topics appearing in the following years, and some branches of physical chemistry beginning to acquire the status of independent domains within chemistry.
The paper is part of an unpublished diary by the dermatologist, Professor Henryk Mierzecki, in which he describes the poor state of the Polish health service prior to World War Two and immediately after its end. The author, who was then Head of the Department of Public Medicine at the Ministry of Health, presents the plans and actions undertaken to improve the situation. These included holding talks on the role of medical care in the workplace, and provided, in the longer run, for the establishment in Warsaw of a Clinical Institute of Labour, in premises donated by the Ministry of Health. The Institute was to house four clinics, several laboratories, a tutorial hall for 50 students and a lecture hall for 150 students. In 1949 the Ministry of Health abandoned plans to establish such an Institute in Warsaw, and transferred the task of organizing one at a later date to the National Institute of Hygiene, while Professor Mierzecki was put in charge of the Dermatology Clinic of the Medical Faculty of the University of Wroclaw. A Department of Occupational Medicine was established by Professor J. Nofer at the Medical School in Lódz in 1952, and it now functions there as the J. Nofer Institute of Occupational Medicine.
The paper presents a review of how the news of the second Nobel Prize awarded to Maria Sklodowska-Curie, and of the slander campaign launched against her in connection with rumours concerning the awarding of the prize, was reported in the Polish press between September and December 1911; the study is based on materials found in the libraries of Warsaw and Wrocław. The major national dailies reported both aspects of the news, while provincial dailies concentrated only on the slander campaign. Some papers failed to report the news altogether. Only a number of weeklies carried news of the Nobel Prize, and monthlies that did publish articles on radioactivity did not mention the Nobel Prize.
The article contains ample fragments of Robert Boyle's dissertation, The Sceptical Chymist, which have been translated into Polish for the first time. Boyle adopts the position of a sceptic in order to criticize, or even in fact to reject the view of the followers of Aristotle and Paracelsus on the nature and number of elements of which all substances were to be composed of. He lists in detail the conditions that must be met by a substance for it to be recognized as a chemical element, but he gives no concrete example of a substance which would meet such conditions. It is for that reason that Aristotelian conception of four elements lingered on in chemistry for another one hundred years. Unlike most other naturalists of his times, Boyle adhered to the corpuscular view of the texture of matter and it was from such a perspective that he criticized the Aristotelian view of fire as a purifying factor, i.e. a factor that linked similar things and separated dissimilar ones. In Boyle's view, fire - or strictly speaking elevated temperature - fragmented a substance into small corpuscules, which might then combine in many ways, recreating the original substance, or forming a new one. Also espousing a corpuscular approach, Boyle argued that as a result of crystallization and distillation of liquid mixtures, the original components of a mixture could be isolated or a new substance might be formed. In such cases Boyle used the term 'compound', but he did so in a general sense, for in the 18th century the meaning of the term was not determined to the extent that it is nowadays.
The paper discusses the title problems (1956-1964) on the basis of the report of author's father, professor of medicine Henryk Mierzecki who was head of the Dermatology Clinic of the Medical Faculty of the University of Wroclaw. Professor H. Mierzecki as initiator and the chairman of the High School Committee of Commemorating Polish Scientists (1954) participated in efforts to build the monument in the Grunwald Square in Wroclaw and in its celebratory uncovering on 3th October 1964.
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